Saturday, September 28, 2013

BLIND
HATRED

The Buddha once observed: “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison
and expecting the other person to die.”

This quote occurred to me recently as
I continued to watch the intense hatred against President Obama play out day
after day in American politics. As a
longtime fan and observer of American politics and reader of Presidential
biographies including those of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Grant, Theodore
Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan,
and Clinton, I can’t recall any other President being subjected to such intense,
unremitting hatred. Bu why? He is highly intelligent, a family man with
no scandal hanging over him, with a beautiful, intelligent wife and two lovely
daughters.

Roosevelt was despised by Wall Street
because they saw him betraying his own kind.
Truman got his share of hatred, of course, and certainly Nixon was
roundly despised by members of the Democratic caucus. So was Clinton to a
lesser degree. Still all of these Presidents were able to garner
across-the-aisle support on key issues important to the nation and eventually got
a lot done despite many skeletons in their closets. On the other hand, try to think of any
support President Obama has received from the other side, even on important
national issues that Republicans formerly had proposed, such as the Affordable
Care Act. Bet you can’t think of one. Once upon a time, for example, construction
projects that help create job and improve the nation’s infrastructure were
slam-dunk certain to get immediate support from both Republicans and
Democrats. No longer. Yet, the President’s jobs bill had
construction and infrastructure at its core elements, but it was DOA on Capitol
Hill.

As the record shows, leaders of the
House and Senate Republicans early on vowed to thwart Obama at every turn, and
threatened to punish any of its members who cooperated with the Administration,
even on issues that were in their own best interest. This is not my opinion; that’s on the
record. And, to give the devil his due,
as my mother use to say, they have been true to their word. Senator Mitch McConnell set the tone shortly
after the 2008 election when asked what the GOP’s priority would be following
Obama’s election, he said: Denying President Obama a second term. That’s a curious thing to say right after an
election.

When a crop of Tea Party candidates
were elected in 2010 and 2012, things got much worse. They now control the House of Representatives
and are threatening to shut down the Government and/or let the U.S. default on
its debt unless Obamacare is defunded. In
my opinion, it’s not so much Obamacare per
se as denying President Obama a large-scale signature achievement like
health reform. The GOP is deathly afraid
it will succeed and to keep that from happening are putting out scary,
distorted misinformation about what it will do to average Americans and the
economy.

The Administration shares some blame
for allowing things to get to the point for allowing its enemies to define it rather than defining the
legislation early on itself and regularly putting out information on its main
provisions and benefits. But, still.

Interestingly, when you ask people why
they don’t like the President, some say he’s arrogant and aloof, a bad
politician who won’t compromise and doesn’t like to schmooze and deal with
Congress to help win over more of their support. But, that doesn’t distinguish President
Obama. President Washington hated White House
get-togethers where he was expected to make small talk; so did President
Jefferson and countless others since then.
Some others say he is a closet Muslim. And despite massive evidence to
the contrary, a surprising number of Americans still believe he was not born in
this country. Nobody wants to say out loud “because he is Black” but that’s a
major reason, and the major overriding reason.

Recently, the University of Rochester
published its findings about where racism remains the strongest. Not surprisingly, it’s in the Cotton Belt and
in other former slave states. Seeing
that study I thought to myself: I wonder where most of the Tea Party House and
Senate members come from? Again, not
surprisingly, the vast majority of House members represent those same
states. Does this mean racism alive and
well only in the South? Of course
not. Look at the racial reaction to the
selection of the latest Miss America. Or
check out the comments on Facebook when President Obama’s name is mentioned as the
worst President ever.

This fruitless effort at killing
Obamacare is seriously damaging the Republican brand and the GOP chances in
upcoming elections, but these Tea Party members and other racist elements in
the Congress don’t seem to care. They keep
drinking their own poison and hoping it will fatally damage Obama’s presidency regardless
of what the long-term consequences are for its own party. Hatred can make us all do stupid things. That’s one of the reasons it is sometimes
called “blind hatred.”

Thursday, September 5, 2013

NEW
BEGINNINGS

With its
falling leaves and other signs of seasonal change, September is often seen as
verdant nature’s way of waving goodbye until next spring. But, I like to think of autumn as a time of
new beginnings: Our kindergarteners are
starting a brand new adventure, middle school children are making the big jump
to high school, presenting new challenges to themselves and certainly to their
parents. And many of you recently
dropped off your children at college, a wrenching and searing experience quite
like no other for both children and parents alike.

For some,
this is a time of adjustment to a new neighborhood and new schools. Others to new love relationships. To a new job.
In some sense, our lives are always becoming, regardless of age, whether
we have just recovered from a serious illness or are mourning the loss of a
spouse or partner.

As in so
many areas of life, poets best capture the spiritual phenomenon and the
challenges of new beginnings, as poet John O’Donoghue does in this poem, “For A
New Beginning:”

Monday, August 26, 2013

RUNNING
SCARED

It’s puzzling to watch the
Tea Party and others on the Far Right in their efforts to defund and/or repeal
Obamacare. Usually, when one political
party loses a major political battle in Congress, it reluctantly picks up the
pieces and moves on to fight another day.
But, not in this case.

President
Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in
March of 2010 – more than three years ago.
And, as we speak, major provisions of the law are being implemented.\

Yet, some
on the Far Right are still fighting a rear-guard action by threatening to shut
down the Government or allowing the U.S. government to default on its
debt. Some House members are even trying
to find ways to impeach the President. Moderate and center-right Republicans see these
extreme efforts as foolish and counterproductive and want no part of them. They remember only too well, for example, what
happened in the 1990’s when the GOP-led House shut down the government. Sure, the House of Representatives has held
votes some 40 times to repeal Obamacare, but everyone knows these are symbolic
gestures to appease the firebrands in their midst.

So, why
all this resistance by so many this late in the game? As former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau and
others have suggested, the GOP resistance is not based on fears that Obamacare
will fail, but that it will succeed.
That’s the GOP’s worst nightmare.
They see it coming and there’s no realistic way to stop it. They know that even if the GOP holds on to
its majority in the House in the 2014 off-year elections and wins control of
the Senate, President Obama with his veto power will still have the final word.

In the
meantime, they have to put up a good face and continue demonizing Obamacare as
a “train wreck” and unworkable and proposing desperate measures that have zero
chance of becoming law. That plays well
with their base and they desperately need to solidify it. At the same time, they certainly understand the
only possible chance the GOP has to repeal Obamacare is if it wins the House,
the Senate, and the Presidency in 2016 and that’s a tall order. Moreover, by the time President leaves
offices in January 2017, the early startup problems will have been forgotten
and millions of Americans will have reaped the benefits of Obamacare for
themselves and their families.

Health
care reform is something Presidents of both parties have been trying to achieve
since the early 1900s when Republican President Theodore Roosevelt first tried
to push through health care reform. And now
the first African-American President, whom the GOP has tried desperately to
thwart at every turn for the last five years, is on the brink of implementing one
of the most significant, far-reaching social programs in U.S. history,
certainly the most important since Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.

The
long-term impact of this achievement will have enormous political implications
for both political parties and that must send icy chills up the spines of
Republicans everywhere.